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Amtrak argues all the ways trains are better than planes in new ad campaign

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Amtrak is need of a rebranding as badly as the U.S. is need of high-speed rail, but the two will likely come in tandem and when they do, have the potential to significantly shake up the way we choose to travel.

-Samantha Shankman

by Samantha Shankman, Skift
Feb 26, 2013 12:01 am

Amtrak is launching a new ad campaign this week featuring its Acela Express service that runs from Washington, D.C. to New York and Boston.

The “Take Off” campaign is basically a dig to air travel that shows passengers enjoying conference tables, cafes to walk around, and working Wi-Fi. (Some Amtrak riders will argued that Amtrak’s Wi-Fi is far from streaming.) The video ad only needs a few shots of riders boarding the train without TSA hassles to complete the train-flight comparison.

The northeast corridor is Amtrak’s fastest and most profitable route. It produced a fourth of the company’s ticket revenue in the year ending in September 2012, during which about 3.4 million passengers climbed onboard.

Amtrak just expanded its Acela service, adding an additional late evening weekday round-trip between New York and Washington, but is considering scrapping the Acela to make way for lighter, faster trains.

The campaign, which includes print, digital, and video components, was developed by Draftfcb New York.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001610175092 Gene Poon

    “…The Northeast Corridor is Amtrak’s fastest and most profitable route…”

    A deception perpetrated by Amtrak. The Northeast Corridor IS their fastest route but “most profitable” is deceptive, as NONE of Amtrak’s routes are profitable. Even if some of the trains on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor take in more ticket revenue than their day-to-day expenses, route profitability also depends on the costs of maintenance and of capital investment in the equipment and property, none of which figure into Amtrak’s specious claims of profitability for the Northeast Corridor. Overall, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor loses money…more of it than the Amtrak routes OUTSIDE the Northeast, where infrastructure and capital costs are much lower.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Loomis/1325916023 Jim Loomis

    Seems to me it was the writer, not Amtrak, who claimed profitability for the Northeast Corridor.

  • Samantha Shankman

    Thanks for your comment, Gene. That was taken from the Bloomberg article that I’ve linked to above. It says, “The 12-year-old Acela, which operates between Washington and Boston, is by far Amtrak’s fastest and most profitable service. It produced about a fourth of the taxpayer-supported railroad’s $2 billion in ticket revenue for the year ended Sept. 30. About 3.4 million passengers rode Acela trains during that period.”

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